Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories (10 page)

S
UBTOTALS

N
umber of refrigerators I’ve lived with: 18. Number of rotten eggs I’ve thrown: 1. Number of finger rings I’ve owned: 3. Number of broken bones: 0. Number of Purple Hearts: 0. Number of times unfaithful to wife: 2. Number of holes in one, big golf: 0; miniature golf: 3. Number of consecutive push-ups, maximum: 25. Number of waist size: 32. Number of gray hairs: 4. Number of children: 4. Number of suits, business: 2; swimming: 22. Number of cigarettes smoked: 83. Number of times I’ve kicked a dog: 6. Number of times caught in the act, any act: 64. Number of postcards sent: 831; received: 416. Number of spider plants that died while under my care: 34. Number of blind dates: 2. Number of jumping jacks: 982,316. Number of headaches: 184. Number of kisses, given: 21,602; received: 20,041. Number of belts: 21. Number of fuckups, bad: 6; not so bad. 1,500. Number of times swore under breath at parents: 838. Number of weeks at church camp: 1. Number of houses owned: 0. Number of houses rented: 12. Number of hunches played: 1,091. Number of compliments, given: 4,051; accepted: 2,249. Number of embarrassing moments: 2,258. Number of states visited: 38. Number of traffic tickets: 3. Number of girlfriends: 4. Number of times fallen off playground equipment, swings: 3; monkey bars: 2; teeter-totter: 1. Number of times flown in dreams: 28. Number of times fallen down stairs: 9. Number of dogs: 1. Number of cats. 7. Number of miracles witnessed: 0. Number of insults, given: 10,038; received. 8,963. Number of wrong telephone numbers dialed: 73. Number of times speechless: 33. Number of times stuck key into electrical socket: 1. Number of birds killed with rocks: 1. Number of times had the wind knocked out of me: 12. Number of times patted on the back: 181. Number of times wished I was dead: 2. Number of times unsure of footing: 458. Number of times fallen asleep reading a book: 513. Number of times born again: 0. Number of times seen double: 28. Number of déjà vu experiences: 43. Number of emotional breakdowns: 1. Number of times choked on bones, chicken: 4; fish: 6; other: 3. Number of times didn’t believe parents: 23,978. Number of lawn-mowing miles: 3,575. Number of light bulbs changed: 273. Number of childhood home telephone: 384-621-5844. Number of brothers: 3½. Number of passes at women: 5. Number of stairs walked, up: 745,821; down: 743,609. Number of hats lost: 9. Number of magazine subscriptions: 41. Number of times seasick: 1. Number of bloody noses: 16. Number of times had sexual intercourse: 4,013. Number of fish caught: 1. Number of times heard “The Star Spangled Banner”: 2,410. Number of babies held in arms: 9. Number of times I forgot what I was going to say: 631.

F
INGERS

W
hen Ronald, Mr. Lacey’s son, came home from the war, he showered, put on a pair of new jeans and a new T-shirt, found his old high-school baseball cap and pulled it down snug over his forehead, then went outside and shot baskets. He shot baskets for about two weeks. One day Mr. Lacey said, “What about that money you saved up? What are you going to do with it?” Ronald shot baskets for a while longer, then went downtown and bought an old Hudson Hornet. He spent five days driving the Hudson back and forth through town, stopping for a root beer when he got thirsty. On the sixth day, when a tire went flat, Ronald locked the car and put his thumb in the air. The next day in the Atkins Museum in Kansas City, he bought a dozen picture postcards of Houdon’s bust of Benjamin Franklin, because with that bald top and that long hair in back that fell to his shoulders, Franklin looked like the queerest duck he’d ever seen. Also Franklin seemed peeved about something. Then Ronald took a bus to New York City. The ride was nothing to crow about—and for maybe three hundred miles a man next to him wanted to describe losing his prostate gland. In New York, Ronald found a room a stones throw from Yankee Stadium. He sent one of the Franklin cards to his father, saying only “Love, Ronald.” Then he sat looking out the window. On the fire escape was a piece of red balloon that the wind was trying to blow away. Finally the wind succeeded and Ronald was tired. He took off his clothes, climbed into bed, and began to count the fingers on his shooting hand.

N
ADINE
A
T
35
:
A
S
YNOPSIS

T
he brain cells slip away, one by one by one. One hundred thousand of them a day, departing. If she is very still and concentrates very hard she can feel it happen. One by one by one, the cells descending to her rump. It is an exodus, a relocation. A mass conservation. Her brain is escaping.

And so, she discovers, is her husband.

“All I need is a little time,” he says, his brown eyes wet and earnest as a cocker spaniels. “Kind of a vacation from marriage. A year or two to find myself.”

And she didn’t even know he was lost.

She bounces back quickly. “So go,” she says. “What the hell,” her vocabulary impoverished already by virtue of the missing cells. She figures she has lost over twelve billion to date, and counting, but is uneasy about numbers, so might be wrong.

“What the hell,” she says again, and helps him pack.

In retrospect she realizes that his defection might be related in cause to her word loss. He, too, is over thirty-five, and has, in fact, been losing cells for six months longer than she. His, at least, did not settle in his rump. She wonders exactly where they went, but cannot summon the energy to look for them. And she cannot ask him, for by the time she thinks of it he is halfway to California.

She sells the house and buys a car, gets a haircut, and prowls the bars. When she has the time. She cannot search for herself because, unlike her husband, she has yet to fully realize that she is lost. She would like to return to school, to become a nuclear engineer, or perhaps a dietitian. There is, however, a problem. Only two worn suits, a set of golf clubs, three monogrammed neckties, and a few billion brain cells were left behind by the vacating husband. The money he took.

So here she is, brain cells oozing out, slipping southward, with three children, a dog, two cats, and a goldfish. Hungry mouths. She does what any other right-thinking thirty-five-year-old American girl would do. She gets a job, subscribes to
Ms
., deletes the word
girl
, along with
housewife
and
mankind
, from her vocabulary, further limiting it, and decides to take a lover. As for the children, she has an extra key to the apartment made for each of them and tells them to fend for themselves. That is the American way.

Finding a lover is difficult. Lovers for thirty-five-year-old brain-diminished vocabulary-impoverished women are in short supply. Particularly for those with three children and miscellaneous pets, even if they do all fend for themselves. So she resigns herself to celibacy, broken by occasional chance encounters and bouts of masturbation. It is a not altogether satisfactory life, but it has its rewards.

She finds, to her surprise, that she enjoys working, and is good at her job. She is a teller at a savings and loan. So friendly is she, so helpful, and so accurate in tabulating the amount of money in her drawer at day’s end—never having to add a penny secretly or take away two—that in time she is promoted to New Accounts. She will go far, they tell her, and she knows they are right.

She makes more money now, and hires a housekeeper. The children and pets are fended for.

She controls the numbers of her life.

The second vice-president of the S&L invites her to dinner.

She accepts.

She is promoted to Business Loans.

The brain cells still escape, but she has no time to notice.

She has found herself without really looking.

And then one day the dog eats the goldfish and the cats get distemper. Her older boy steals a lace bra and the girl gets the measles. The younger boy sulks. The sink backs up in the bathroom and the housekeeper quits. She finds twelve gray hairs at her left temple and her life insurance lapses. Her husband always handled that sort of thing.

The second vice-president’s wife calls her a name that she wishes had been deleted from her vocabulary, and she realizes she is no longer thirty-five. Then her husband telephones from Oregon where he has been working on a lumber crew and drinking beer and sleeping around since he left California and tells her he is tired of his vacation and wants to come home. She feels the cells slipping, and her rump widens alarmingly.

“What the hell,” she says.

F
EEDING
T
HE
H
UNGRY

Y
ou’re bound to think I’m a liar: but I’ve never felt hungry. I don’t know what hunger means. As far back as I can remember I’ve never known what it was like. I eat, of course, but without appetite. I feel absolutely nothing, not even distaste. I just eat.

People often ask me, “How do you manage to eat, then?” I have to admit that I don’t know. What happens usually is that I’m sitting at a table and there’s a plateful of food in front of me. Since I’m rather absentminded I very soon forget about it. When I think about it again, the plate is empty. That’s what happens.

Does this mean that I eat under hypnosis, in some kind of dissociated state? Certainly not. I said that this is what usually happens. But not always. Sometimes I remember the plate of food in front of me. But that doesn’t stop me from emptying it all the same.

Naturally I’ve tried fasting. But that didn’t work. I got thinner and thinner. I gave up just in time. A little longer and I would have died of hunger without knowing it. This experience frightened me so much that I now eat all the time. That way I don’t worry. I’m tall and strong, and I have to keep the machine going. For other people, hunger provides a warning; since I am deprived of it I have to be doubly careful. As I said earlier, I’m absentminded. To forget would be fatal. I prefer to eat all the time: it’s safer. I realize too that when I don’t eat I become nervous and irritable, and don’t know what to do about it. Instead, I smoke too much and drink too much, which is bad.

In the street I am frequently accosted by gaunt men dressed in rags. They gaze at me with fever-bright eyes and stammer out, “We’re hungry!” I look at them with hatred. They eat only a crust of dry bread once a month, if that, but they enjoy it. “Hungry, are you!” I say to them nastily. “You’re lucky.”

Sobs rattle in their throats. Shudders rack them. Eventually they move off with slow, hesitant steps. As for me, I go into the first restaurant I see. Will the miracle occur? My heart beats fast as I swallow the first mouthful. A terrible despair overwhelms me. Nothing. Nothing at all. No appetite. I take my revenge by eating furiously, like someone drowning their sorrow in drink.

I leave the restaurant weighed down with food and hatred. For I’m becoming bitter. I’m beginning to detest other people, people who are hungry. I hate them. So they’re hungry, are they? I hope they die of hunger! I shan’t be sorry for them! After all, thinking about people who are hungry while I’m eating is the only pleasure left to me.

Translated by Margaret Crosland and David LeVay